Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
There was no desk, but I felt like the little fridge and coffee area more than made up for the lack of one. I didn’t need a desk anyway.
The whole space had the lingering scent of bleach and lemon Pledge, despite none of the “wood” in the room being real.
It was a kind of nostalgic smell that brought me back to my childhood for just a moment. So many “Sunday resets” with my mom. She’d worked too much during the week to get much cleaning done, so we both rolled up our sleeves on Sundays to start the week with a clean house. She’d get hard to work on the kitchen and bathrooms while I would vacuum the living room and Pledge all the wood surfaces, leaning down to take long sniffs of the lemon scent.
A whole lifetime ago, it seemed now. Though I did still do Sunday resets, even while living in temporary accommodations.
I moved toward the closet, finding several hangers still inside, along with a random laundry basket that someone must have left behind.
That was another perk to this hotel: there was a laundry room on the lower floor. No more dragging things to the laundromat. Or, let’s face it, washing things in the bathtub, since babies went through a metric ton of clothes and burp cloths in a week. And, well, I didn’t have a lot of extras.
“Let’s get your bed set up, huh?” I said to my daughter as I hauled her playard up onto the bed to unzip it from its bag, then pull it out.
I’d sprung for a somewhat fancy one that had a bassinet area and a changing space, since I’d known from the day the stick turned blue that I was going to be doing this all on my own with no stable place to live, so having everything in one neat package was going to be the best bet for us.
Was it ideal to have a growing baby in a portable crib? No. Obviously. Cribs were bigger and had thicker mattresses. But my research said they were just as safe.
Besides, literally nothing about the situation we found ourselves in was ideal. We just had to do the best we could with what we had.
“I know. I’m almost done,” I assured Lainey as she started to grumble and pull her little legs up against my stomach. “There,” I said when the playard was up and the two top sections were in place. “Alright. Hungry?” I asked, pulling my sweet little three-month-old out of the carrier and placing her in the playard. “Give me a minute, alright?” I said in the singsong voice she liked.
I grabbed the diaper bag and made my way into the bathroom to get the hot water running as I shook the scoop of formula into the bottle, pretending not to feel that familiar pang of regret that I didn’t get the chance to nurse.
The idea of nursing had been a small comfort when going through the absolute hellish fear and uncertainty of my pregnancy. If nothing else, I knew I would be able to feed my baby, no matter how much I was struggling financially.
Then, in the cruelest twist of fate, the milk never came in.
The lactation nurse had worked with me for days, trying to calm my fears and pretending not to notice my frustrated tears, until ultimately telling me that sometimes periods of extreme stress can mess up your body’s ability to create oxytocin, which is needed to help the milk release.
And, yeah, you could say from the ninth week when I knew I was pregnant to after I gave birth had been nothing but a never-ending panic attack or depression.
Hell, most days I was still fighting off the panic.
I was full of what-ifs and and-thens.
What if I didn’t earn enough money one week and then we couldn’t pay for a room?
What if my car broke down and then I couldn’t do my work?
What if my phone broke and then I couldn’t take more jobs to make money?
It just went on and on and on.
I would just lie in bed, dead-tired, but unable to shut my brain off so I could fall asleep.
Even recognizing the pattern and trying to put an end to it—if for no other reason than babies could sense that kind of anxiety and my baby deserved a peaceful, regulated mother—often wouldn’t help me stay calm until my stomach was in so many knots that I found myself dry-heaving on my knees in the bathroom, stomach too empty to even produce any food most of the time.
I glanced up at the mirror, hardly recognizing my reflection anymore.
I had the same pale blonde hair. But these days, it wasn’t carefully styled to have that ‘effortless’ loose wave. It was always pulled back in a messy bun. The cleanliness of it? Questionable. The last time it saw a trim? Almost a year.